Lockout Over, Minnesota Orchestra Faces Challenges as It Salvages Its Season

The end of the corrosive 15-month lockout of the Minnesota Orchestra on Tuesday was greeted with relief by musicians, management and fans, who took to the “Save Our Symphony Minnesota” Facebook page and other websites to praise the impending return of music to Orchestra Hall.

But even as the new contract agreement finally puts an end to the classical music world’s longest-running, bitterest labor battle, the orchestra is facing daunting challenges.

The players of the orchestra, which had reached new artistic heights in recent years with its Grammy-nominated Sibelius recordings and its growing national profile, are returning to a leaderless ensemble: Their music director, Osmo Vanska, resigned in October. Some players may not return at all: A couple have resigned, and eight more have taken leaves of absence since the lockout began. Another question is whether audiences will return, after a lost season and a half.

“It does take quite a while for everybody to be comfortable again just playing with each other,” said Leonard Slatkin, the music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, who had to rebuild that orchestra after a six-month strike in 2011. “It sounds odd, coming from a conductor, but the biggest thing they have to do now is not about the music — it’s about reconnecting with everybody in the Twin Cities.”

Musicians said in interviews that they were eager to get back to work with their colleagues after a topsy-turvy year. Many made ends meet during the lockout by taking temporary gigs with orchestras around the country. R. Douglas Wright, the principal trombone player, said, “I’ve upped my status with Delta Air Lines.” Steven Campbell, the tuba player, said he counted himself lucky to find fill-in work, considering that most orchestras have only one tuba.

Some players have drawn unemployment benefits. Some have taught. One of the more unusual temporary jobs was taken by a horn player, Ellen Dinwiddie Smith, who, in addition to appearing with the Cleveland Orchestra, said that she worked for a month as a dive master in Mexico.

The contract that the musicians agreed to will cut base pay by 15 percent in the first year, with small raises in the second and third years, and require them to pay more toward their health coverage. The original proposal by management would have cut their pay by roughly one-third.

Several players said in interviews that they were pleased that the deal would keep the orchestra one of the 10 best-paid in the nation — something they hope will help bring back some of the members on leave and attract talented musicians who will see Minnesota as a destination where they can make a career, rather than as a stop on the way to somewhere better. And several said that they hoped that Mr. Vanska could be induced to return as music director.

As painful as the lockout was, some players said it had brought them closer together — and closer to some of their most passionate fans, who came out to support them at a series of concerts that they produced themselves and even donated money to help their cause.

Photo

The conductor Osmo Vanska.Credit
Matthew Murphy for The New York Times

“I think that one of the most inspiring things for us was seeing how much the audience loved the orchestra when we did our musician-produced concerts, and we are going to do everything that we can to bring those audiences back into Orchestra Hall,” said Timothy Zavadil, a clarinet player who negotiated for the musicians.

Most of the players have not been inside their Minneapolis home, Orchestra Hall, since it reopened in September after a $50 million renovation — a big capital expenditure that drew criticism, coming at the same time that the orchestra’s management was seeking significant pay cuts from the players in order to close big operating deficits each year.

The novelty of the newly renovated hall may help bring audiences back. Any interruption of performances is considered dangerous in the classical music world, where longtime subscribers may decide not to renew, once the habit is broken. (Audiences never bounced back for New York City Opera after it went dark for a season for the renovation of its theater; it filed for bankruptcy this fall.)

Orchestra officials face considerable short-term challenges, including a scramble to put together a compressed season featuring 37 classical concerts and a host of other concerts for young people and families, beginning sometime in early February and lasting through June.

“In a normal year, you would have nine months to sell a subscription and get everybody seated,” Michael Henson, the Minnesota Orchestra’s president and chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview. “We now have the very complicated logistics of doing this in a three-week period.”

Then there are the long-term challenges. Mr. Henson said that the new labor deal would save the orchestra $3.5 million in the first year — a significant savings, but not enough to wipe out deficits that had been running at $6 million a year before the lockout, which had forced the orchestra to use more of its endowment funds than many board members thought was prudent.

A financial analysis conducted on behalf of management that was released in June concluded that classical audiences were likely to diminish further and that it was “unrealistic to think that the orchestra can fund-raise its way out of its current financial difficulties.” Some of the bad blood stirred up by the recent labor difficulties may make fund-raising even tougher.

Several players said that there were lessons to be learned, particularly about communication between players and management.

“I am optimistic, I am certain that we’re going to pull ourselves out of it,” Mr. Wright said. “But I think there’s a lot of it that could have been avoided, and I hope that others learn from this example what not to do.”

Correction: January 15, 2014

Because of an editing error, a headline that ran with an earlier version of this story mischaracterized the labor dispute involving the Minnesota Orchestra. It was a lockout, not a strike.

A version of this article appears in print on January 16, 2014, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Minnesota Orchestra Still Faces Challenges. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe